Barbarians In Oklahoma

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But when silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

--Albert Camus, Reflections On The Guillotine

I am saying this quite deliberately. The state of Oklahoma committed an act of fucking barbarism last night. It did so under the color of law, which makes every citizen of that benighted state complicit in the act of fucking barbarism. The governor of that state, a pink balloon named Mary Fallin, is a fucking barbarian. A state legislator named Mike Christian is a fucking barbarian, for reasons we will get to in a moment. Every politician in that benighted state belongs in a fucking cage this morning.

Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first
of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination was
administered Tuesday evening. Three minutes later, he began breathing
heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head
off the pillow. Officials later blamed a ruptured vein for the problems
with the execution, which are likely to fuel more debate about the
ability of states to administer lethal injections that meet the U.S.
Constitution's requirement they be neither cruel nor unusual punishment.

This is only the basics of what went on. To get a real flavor of the fucking barbarism practiced by the state of Oklahoma -- Mary Fallin, Governor -- last night, you have to go to the Twitter feed of a fine AP reporter named Bailey Elise McBride, who was in the death chamber. If there ever is a Pulitzer for tweeting, Bailey Elise McBride is a stone cold lock for it. I think this is the one that is most illustrative of the act of fucking barbarism practiced by the state of Oklahoma -- Mary Fallin, Governor -- and witnessed by Bailey Elise McBride, damn fine reporter, is the one where the guy tells the people trying to kill him, "Something's wrong."

UPDATE: McBride issued a correction via Twitter that the inmate didn't say "something's wrong." The New York Timeshas reported that the inmate said "oh, man."

Regardless, Fallin, the fucking barbarian, is calling for an "investigation" into what happened last night in the death chamber over which she presides. Let's give her a hand, shall we, with a big tip of the hat to Andrew Cohen, who's been riding this one very hard. For the past several months, the very acts of fucking barbarism in question -- the one practiced on Clayton Lockett, and the one that was supposed to be practiced on Charles Warner, but was postponed when things went so badly awry -- have been central to a general hooley within the Oklahoma legal system.

But lawyers for both men argue that Oklahoma has violated both state and
federal law by refusing to disclose where it obtained the drugs to be
used on Lockett and Warner, how the drugs were manufactured, what their
efficacy may be, and other basic information necessary to determine
whether the upcoming executions would violate the "cruel and unusual"
punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment.

You see, some of our finer pharmaceutical companies have begun to balk at providing the means to kill people, seeing that as somewhat contrary to their life's mission. In response, states wishing to kill people have begun to scramble to find the means to do so. Pity the poor executioners. They know not what to do.

California launched a "secret mission" to swap some of its muscle
relaxant for vials of Arizona's sodium thiopental in 2010. A team of
California guards, picking up "the package" from Arizona, shuttled it
north on Interstate 5, handing it off in the San Joaquin Valley to a
second team that took it to San Quentin's death row. Scott Kernan,
a California prison executive at the time, exulted over the mission's
success in an e-mail that became grist for Comedy Central's Colbert Report: "You guys in AZ are life savers. By (sic) you a beer next time I get that way." Mississippi
officials explored obtaining sedatives from a veterinary school.
Kentucky discussed how to mask the purpose of ordered drugs to avoid
"ethics or moral concerns."

"Mask the purpose."

Fucking barbarians.

One other solution the embattled executioners have found to their problem is to use "compounding centers," pharmaceutical chop shops, which were largely unregulated until last year, when one here in the Commonwealth -- God save it! -- started killing people all around the country. This, however, was the solution that the state of Oklahoma chose, which led to its having committed an act of fucking barbarism last night. But the story gets even more sordid. There simply was nobody who was going to stop Fallin, the fucking barbarian, from killing the people she so wanted to kill. On the way, the rule of law died, too.

On April 21, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a stay of the two executions in question because it was concerned that the state was keeping its pharmaceutical weapons of choice secret, probably because it had bought the stuff on the cheap from some manufacturer with a limited notion of quality control. Falling, the fucking barbarian, went batshit. She simply refused to recognize the authority of her state's Supreme Court in this matter.

"I cannot give effect to the order by that honorable court."

Well, all right, then.

But the fucking barbarians were not done yet. Representative Mike Christian -- a man whom we now know has been plagued from birth by irony -- followed up on Fallin's dictum by proposing to impeach the five justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court who voted to issue the stay. (Remember, the state Supreme Court wasn't opposed to the executions per se. It just wanted clarification on the means to that end.) Unfortunately, the state Supreme Court caved, reversing itself on the execution secrecy law, and allowing the things to proceed, and that's how Fallin, the fucking barbarian, and her enablers in the Oklahoma state legislature, the fucking barbarians, were able to commit the act of fucking barbarism that Bailey Elise McBride had to witness last night. And now Fallin, the fucking barbarian, wants an investigation into how, exactly, she committed an act of fucking barbarism. It is because you have maggots for a soul, you fucking barbarian.

"From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

-- Justice Harry Blackmun

UPDATE -- McBride has clarified one point in her account of the events in question. She now says it was a member of the prison staff, and not the man being killed, who said, "Something's wrong."